Entrepreunerial Innovation and Actionable Foresight

August 19, 2012

The crew was prepared to go until 10pm. I was hoping we'd be done by 8pm. Or 6pm best case scenario. We had a lot of material to shoot. Two days compressed into one. We had to get through it. We did it in lightening speed. The crew started leaving at 3pm. Most of them were gone by 3:30. I was home at 4:30pm. We got amazing footage. Gorgeous, magical footage. More footage than we excepted. At our usual exemplary quality.

That is the power of planning.

When I talk about planning, or try to do it on projects I am not the leader of, or suggest it to a team /individual that doesn't think highly of it I often get pushback about it's value.

There is this (mistaken) assumption that if you plan, you have to stick to the plan. Having a plan does not equal that you will never change it. I believe, and my experience shows that having a plan opens one up to more possibilities than without one. You not only have the possibilities that you explored systematically (and either agreed to implement or not) in the planning phase, but you also have all the possibilities that emerge magically, synchronistically of their own accord.

In other words, when you have the baseline for success planned for execution, it's a lot easier to reach for superawesomeness. You can reach higher, farther, faster. Do more with less. You've got a plan to hit your goals, achieve what you need to achieve, and the resources to do it. But who likes to rest on their laurels? (Not I, and not the people I work with/hire.) We like to push it. We like to do more. We like to stretch.

And you can push it, do more and stretch farther after you create a plan.

Sure you can chuck the plan out the window. Sure I know the quote that it's not about the plan, it's about planning. And I am 100% behind going with the awesome magical unknown.

My plans and planning gives me the flexibility, the efficiency and the resources to diverge from the plan - at any point and for any quantity. They give me peace of mind to do my best, to allow the people I work with/hire to do their best. I've thought about every last corner case and I'm open to the new, novel, innovative solution, idea or other perspective.

The movie magic that always happens.

Those are the things I live for. That magic. The things you can't plan. Emerged perfection. The stuff you would never think of. I find those things happen a lot more when I have a plan. ;)